The photograph accompanying this post is of my two grandfathers in military uniform. They fought against each other in World War I. As far as I know, they were never on the same battlefield. I never heard either of them talk about their war experience, but I heard a few of their war stories from other members of the family. Gondaddy, my paternal grandfather and a Lieutenant in the America army, apparently had an affair with a French countess while he recovered from being gassed. When Opa, my maternal grandfather, returned home after the war, I was told that the first thing he did was to break his saber across his knee with the words, “no more war”.
What Opa did tell me is that the chaos in postwar Germany was so intense – inflation was so rapid he brought his nearly worthless cash salary home in a suitcase and his best friend was murdered – that he felt he needed to leave the country (not to mention that as the youngest son he had no claim to the family farm.) He emigrated to America in 1925, settling in the German enclave of Milwaukee. He arranged for his fiancée to join him two years later. They married as soon as she disembarked from the ship, and my mother was born nine months later.
My parents met at the University of Wisconsin and married in 1949. Given the fact that my grandfathers were sworn enemies in a merciless war, I could imagine that they would be opposed to my parents’ marriage. That the enmity would continue some thirty years later. That didn’t happen. The one time I remember my grandfathers being together was at Christmas in the late 1950s. They called each other Ralph and Otto. I don’t remember any tension between them which, as I reflect on it nearly seventy years later, is somewhat surprising – and gratifying.
I am writing this post on Memorial Day, a national day of remembrance that was established in 1868, after the Civil War. Originally called Decoration Day, when flowers decorated the graves of those killed in the four-year conflict, Memorial Day honors those who lost their lives defending their country. My grandfathers were spared in a war that claimed 7 million killed in action along with an estimated 9 million civilian deaths. In 1914 the English author H.G. Wells called it the “war to end all wars”; President Woodrow Wilson used the phrase to rally the country’s support when the United States joined the conflict in 1917. It was thought that the human cost of WWI would shock humanity into a perpetual peace, that the staggering loss of life would lead people to conclude that a war of that magnitude could not be fought again. It was a war to end all wars.
That hasn’t happened. World War II broke out twenty years later, and God knows how many since. There have been military wars, and sectarian wars, wars on drugs, terrorism, and millions of people desperately trying to flee wars. Added to the horrific menace is an emerging existential war, which has engaged nearly all of us, fueled by forces and voices that are determined to keep factions at a distance, if not in perpetual resentment and hostility.
In recent weeks I have had conversations with people whose sources of information on the major issues of the day are the polar opposite of mine. While I can acknowledge that they have radically different opinions and perspectives, I don’t understand those positions and find it nearly impossible to honor them. And so we each find ourselves thinking – or saying – how can you believe that? How can you say that? What then can happen with any of us who find ourselves in these fraught moments is that we square off – weaponizing our words, doubling down on our perspective, intending to vanquish the other side. An existential war.
What is slowly sinking in as I compose this post is that my ability to write, to love, indeed to live, is because my grandfathers were spared. Their lives were spared, yes – but more than that my family was spared of the resentment that inevitably emerges when soldiers are trained to vanquish one another. I am convinced that my parents’ love for one another was a source of healing for my grandfathers.
What we need to painfully and tragically recognize is that there is not a war to end all wars. War doesn’t end war. War perpetuates war, be it physical, verbal or existential.
We need to engage other resources – healing, hope, love, listening. They won’t end all wars, but they can redirect our need to dismiss, demean or even destroy one another. In some cases, the life-giving mix of healing, hope, love and listening can mitigate and even stop wars.Those resources are in abundant supply. Let’s use them.
